Call for Participation

RAMI (Robotics for Asset Maintenance and Inspection) is one of the four challenge-led robotic competitions of METRICS project. RAMI competition aims at addressing Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) tasks achieved by aerial and underwater robots, since they are involved for the most promising applications in this sector due to the risks and costs associated with works at height or underwater inspections performed by human operators. 

However, in order to tackle the different challenges of the I&M sector, and increase the added value of using robots, it is key to increase their autonomy level. A high degree of autonomy is especially required when a direct link with an operator cannot be guaranteed, or when it is required to perform inspection tasks repetitively. Autonomous decisions can also increase the robot's mission performance and guarantee robot survival in hostile or cluttered environments, where it is difficult to teleoperate robots safely. Therefore, the evaluation process of RAMI competitions will mainly involve tasks related to autonomous navigation and data acquisition for I&M purposes. 

Since aerial and underwater domains are very different, both domains will be evaluated separately in two different tracks. CATEC, the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies, will organize the aerial domain, and CMRE, the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation, will be in charge of the underwater domain. Both will conduct the competition evaluations in realistic environments of interest for I&M end-users. 

RAMI, as well as the other competitions in METRICS project, will be organized as a series of campaigns. There will be two types of competitions:

• Field competitions, in which the physical devices are tested in realistic environments (i.e. physical test-beds).
• Cascade competitions, in which software is tested on data generated during the field competition.The competitions during the first year of METRICS will be conducted in the form of a dry-run, both for the field and the cascade competitions. This dry-run will not involve external participants, so the evaluation protocol and evaluation tools will be tested by the organizers, CMRE and CATEC, at their own testbeds for underwater and aerial robots. 

After this dry-run, a competition of each type will be organized once a year for the two remaining years of METRICS project. Even though external participants are not expected for the dry-run in the first year, we encourage potentially interested teams to reach out to the organizers through im@metricsproject.eu in order to get additional information.